Appeasement, Ohio
Yeow, the old Ohio place. My cousin Maribeth looks about the same. Her son Kip’s a man now: big boy, around two-fifty, thick pink arms like tattooed hams.
I meet Carl, Maribeth’s third, possibly fourth, husband: nice guy, sprig of hair on the front of his head like a Kewpie, but white hair, not blond.
Also Mick, a pal of Kip’s.
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“Eggs?” Carl says.
“No, thanks,” I say.
“I will,” Kip says.
“Scrambled,” Mick says.
“Unless you boys no longer believe in eggs,” Carl says. “Or chickens. Mick, still believe in chickens?”
“Yes, sir, still believe in chickens,” Mick says, maintaining discipline.
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“Upstairs, in the attic?” Carl says. “Kip? A box of Civil War coat buttons, from your great-great-whoever. Plus his bayonet.”
“Anyone can make a button,” Mick says.
“Anyone can put a bayonet in an attic,” Kip says.
“Look how I trained him up,” Mick says.
I’m trying to connect the beaming giant that is Kip with the shy little guy I used to carry up to bed.
Carl sets down a plate of toast.
“Food for the brain trust,” he says.
“You’re being sarcastic,” says Mick.
“Ma’s a believer,” says Kip.
“Well, you kids make a strong case,” Maribeth says.
“For example,” says Kip, spinning his Dell around.
Headline: “Gettysburg Archaeology Proves No Battle.” Author: “Ned.” Photo: metal detector leaning against a palm tree. Nailed to the tree, a laminated sign: “Locale: Gettysburg, PA.”
“Zero palm trees in Pennsylvania,” Carl says.
“That you know of,” Kip says.
“That anyone knows of,” Carl says.
“What’s your source?” Mick says in a faux-military voice.
“Having been there many times,” Carl says.
“Have you walked literally every square foot of the state?” Mick says.
“Shit’s sake,” Carl says.
“Language,” Maribeth says. “We don’t swear in this house.”
After my diagnosis, I e-mailed Maribeth, not asking for anything, just sharing. Within an hour she wrote back: “I’ll do screening, also Kip will.” A week later: “I’m not right, but Kip says no problem.” “It will be a true honor,” Kip wrote. “Remember how fun when you lived with us, just super happy memories of what was otherwise rough time for me as kid.”
Not painful supposedly.
Still: micro-slice, eyeball, hypodermic, inject.
Imagine the generosity of that.
Kip runs upstairs to get ready. Mick refills his plate, drifts outside. Maribeth and I sit at Grandma’s old table.
A few things hang in the air between us.
From her side: You never stayed in touch. You been making decent money all these years. We never heard from you. At all. Until now. Now you show up? Because you need us? Except once you sent him a screwdriver set. And a postcard from Hawaii and one from France. Like that shit helped.
From mine: I was dealing with Karla’s eating disorder, my tinnitus, her affair, the divorce, having to learn every stupid feature of every used car that came in. Also: balding, knee surgery, the deaths of two dogs, another knee surgery, this idiotic eye thing.
From hers: Kid was crazy about you. And you were crazy about him. If you didn’t love him back then, who did you ever? You could’ve done more. You should’ve. But you vanished.
From mine: I never thought about it like that until just now.
“Family,” she says. “Hug it out.”
We hug it out.
Kip comes slamming down the stairs, this huge mass barely staying upright by repeatedly grabbing the railing just in time.
“Leo, let’s hit it,” he says. “Get you that new eyeball or whatnot.”
Afterward, I take the whole crew to lunch at the PigHip in Rosemont.
Least I can do.
Our table’s right under the big metal Pig. The Pig’s got a motor in its groin area that makes its hips swivel. Every rotation its hips go grrWHOP, grrWHOP.
“You dudes resemble matching pirates,” the waitress says.
“Eye graft,” Kip says. “Me to him.”
“Eek,” she says.
“Lincoln,” says Carl. “In on it?”
“Don’t get me started,” says Mick.
“Take him off the goddamned penny,” says Kip.
“Language,” says Maribeth.
“I’ll just say this,” Mick says, putting his hand on top of Kip’s head like it’s a basketball he’s palming. “Locate this monster on one end of a rope and a Lincoln statue on the other? Big effing statue comes down, people. And the top hat breaks off.”
Out of his pocket Kip pops what looks like a top-hat fragment.
“You did that?” the waitress says.
“Is this something we want to be discussing in public?” Carl says.
“I could do an even bigger one,” Kip says shyly.
“Our ass-kicking giant,” Mick says. “Frigging force multiplier. High hopes for this brute.”
“Not a brute,” Maribeth says to the waitress. “Very gentle.”
“Slavery,” Carl says. “Real or no?”
“Hard to say,” Mick says. “Looking like no.”
“I can find you ten thousand books that say it was,” Carl says.
“I can find you ten thousand books that say it wasn’t,” Mick says.
“Actually, you can’t,” Carl says.
“Watch me,” Mick says. “I’ll go on Amazon. Or, if not, that totally proves my point. Who stopped all those books from being published? Why aren’t there, like, an equal number of books?”
“Leo,” Carl says to me. “You’re an educated person. Care to weigh in?”
“He’s smart, he’s staying out of it,” Maribeth says.
“Who makes up a war?” Carl says. “How? Why?”
“Apply your rational thinking mind, Carlifier,” Mick says. “Who benefits? Who does everyone suddenly feel sorry for? Who gets all the sympathy? Plus the power? People enslaved other people? Come on. Does that seem like something people would actually do? Or allow someone to do to them?”
“Jesus,” says Carl.
“You’re welcome,” says Mick.
“GrrWHOP,” says the Pig’s hip.
Maribeth leans over to me reassuringly.
“Kip has friends of all colors,” she says.
“He has exactly one friend,” Carl says. “This goof. Who looks pretty much entirely white to me.”
“I am, no worries,” Mick says. “I did GeneJurney. Like six times.”
“Did you not get the answer you wanted at first?” Carl says. “Or are you just constantly seeking confirmation?”
“Do the work, Carl,” says Mick.
“For you two to talk about work is rich,” Carl says. “Which, neither one of you has lifted a goddamned finger in a year.”
“Harsh, Carl,” says Maribeth.
“And in no way invalidates our findings,” says Mick.
Kind of quiet on the way home.
Here’s PornHole, the Evangelical MaxChurch, the old town hall, which got converted into a disco during the seventies, then burned halfway down and got condemned, and then part of it was rebuilt in the nineties and that rebuilt part is now the showroom for Dansen-Thymer Chrysler.
I’m up front with Maribeth. Carl’s in back with Kip and Mick, who look like two kids we’re dropping at a sock hop except they’ve got stubble and are dressed all military, as if about to parachute out.
“Swanky car,” Mick says. “Get it free? From your dealership?”
In fact, yes. Eugene, who runs the dealership, let me start using it. After I quit my book club, busted my hump, had a killer month.
“Why go after Leo?” Maribeth says. “He just got here.”
“To me, it’s more of a spacecraft feel,” Kip says.
“That’s how they get you,” Mick says. “Slip you some shiny toy, let you play Mr. Hot Shot. That’s what’s called a Deceptive Comp. Or Luring Comp.”
“Where’s it called that?” Carl says.
“In my book,” Mick says.
“His literal book,” Kip says.
“Love to read that,” Carl says.
“Oh, you will,” Kip says. “Someday everyone will.”
“I, for one, will not,” Carl says.
“Leo, look, I get it,” Mick says. “My dad sold Fords. Until the bitter end. Died in the showroom. Holding a brochure or a coffee mug or some such shit. Total waste of a life. I told him that. On his deathbed. Maybe, like him, you’re caught up in what’s known as the Accomplishment Mindweb.”
“If your dad died in the showroom, how’d he also get a deathbed?” Carl says.
“Hey,” Mick says.
“Why ‘hey’?” says Carl. “It’s logic, simple logic: How can a guy die in a showroom and on a deathbed? Unless he somehow died twice.”
“Carl, rude,” Kip says.
“Doghouse for you, Mister,” Maribeth says.
“Woof,” says Kip.
“Speak, Carl, sit,” says Mick.
I’m thinking fondly of my condo in Wichita: looking out the cracked sliding glass door at the supersized flag that flies perpetually, even in the pouring rain, over Bins&Stuff, no talking going on whatsoever.
On the other hand, Boxton syndrome. That’s what I’ve got, per Dr. Penn back in Kansas. What I need? A double Hex-Graveson.
“If not?” he said. “Blind within a year. Well, worse than blind, in a way. Things will seem to be zinging suddenly out at you from various fields of utter darkness.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yes, we don’t love that,” he said, then referred me to Eye-to-Eye, this national support site. Most depressing thing I’ve ever read: people who’d flown donors in from China, liquidated life savings, sold off vacation cottages, traded kidneys, boats, vintage cars.
Lucky for me, there was Kip.
Carl asks to be dropped at the foundry for his half shift. The foundry’s been decommissioned and he’s part of the crew stripping out the old equipment. He’s hoping to be part of the crew that’ll tear the building down. After that he’s hoping to be part of the crew that’ll come back at the end and jackhammer up the parking lot.
After that, that’s it for Carl.
“What’s next, eyewise?” he says jovially, trying to get de-doghoused.
“Just letting the graft kick in,” I say.
“May it grow like a mother,” he says.
“Do good,” Maribeth says.
“I’ll try,” he says, then just stands frozen, like the part of him that knows how to walk through a gate into a failed foundry’s suddenly gone on the fritz.
“Go,” Maribeth says. “Go in.”
“Boys, I want to apologize,” he says. “I spoke out of turn. Manners maketh man. Could be I view things too much in terms of yes or no. I’m perhaps a bit behind the times.”
“You think?” Kip says.
“But listen,” Carl says. “Shiloh?”
“Fake,” Kip says.
“Chickamauga?” Carl says.
“Chicka-whoga?” Kip says.
Carl lowers his head like a hitter hit by a pitch, then rouses himself and breaks into a stiff, elderly trot, shooting a salute over at whoever’s inside the tilted little guard hut.
“I know he goes overboard,” Maribeth says. “But you boys do tend to bait him.”
“We do,” Mick says.
“We love it,” Kip says.
“Carl’s a turd clinging to the side of the toilet of received wisdom,” Mick says.
“Well, that seems harsh,” Maribeth says. “He does pay for everything.”
“Don’t you think we know that, Ma?” Kip says. “Don’t you think we know who pays for stuff?”
“Someday he’ll thank us for setting his bony ass down on the right side of history,” Mick says.
“By letting him pay for stuff,” Kip says.
Maribeth cuts her eyes over at me to see how all this is landing.
I stay neutral. Which seems to bug her. She reaches over, gives me a poke in the eye patch.
“Guess I didn’t realize these units were going to be involved,” she says.
Well, it was in the e-mail, I think: protective eye covering to minimize post-procedure infection risk.
“Don’t mean to make you feel guilty about it,” she says.
She pulls the strap back, lets it pop.
“And yet I am,” she says.
Pops it again.
“Ma,” Kip says. “He’s driving.”
“No worries,” she says. “Me and this kid go way back.”
Yes, we do.
Kip’s dad split after Maribeth started having her issues. At one point, she wrestled Kip’s art teacher to the floor in front of the whole class. Next day, Kip opened his lunchbox to find a cube of hash in there, with a fork, a spoon, and a napkin on which she’d written “MY ROCKING ANGEL.” I wasn’t doing so great myself at the time: lawn-mowing, sitting around the library applying for government jobs until three or four, when it was time to get catastrophically bent at the Aero with Eli and/or Bryant. When Maribeth went into rehab, I took the bus out here from Kansas. Cooked for Kip, helped him with homework, tucked him in, walked him to school in the morning, giving him little pep talks on the way—joy, not fear, and so on. Mornings, I’d find him asleep on the bench by the front door, coat, hat, and backpack all on. That’s how scared he was of being late. I’d haul him upright by a strap, give him a hug, tell him I knew it was hard but he had to keep going.
So it’s not like I never did anything for them.
Just not all that much recently.
“Nice lunch, I’m about to bust, ugh,” Maribeth says.
Right on Coulter, left on Freeley.
Once had a bad date at this Galveston’s. Once sat on that exact bus bench listening to a series of very blah carols coming over from Alliance of God, which is now twice the size it was and has an outdoor climbing wall.
Here’s the house.
“What’s that up in the gutter?” Maribeth says.
“When he was a child, he thought as a child,” Mick says.
“No more gliders, Ma,” Kip says.
“I just bought that for you like last month,” she says.
“Then get it down yourself and you play with it,” Kip says.
Mick and Kip climb out of the car and stretch at their leisure like a couple of young kings.
“Pretty negligible back seat,” says Mick.
“Bundy time,” says Kip.
In we go.
Apparently, as Ted Bundy, Kip’s been Paused since last night, hiding under the porch of an attractive law student who’s suddenly on to him.
“I have to either Sprint Toward Car or End Her,” he says. “The thing is, based on some trophies in there, she may know karate.”
Mick and Kip bound upstairs.
“It’s a killing game but he knows it’s not real,” Maribeth says.
“I know it’s not real, Ma!” Kip shouts from the landing.
From upstairs comes the sound of the two of them fighting for the roller chair.
“Just so you know,” Maribeth says. “I’m not saying the Civil War didn’t happen. Just that it might not have. Because how would we know? You know? There’s so much bullcrap out there.”
We were always the two gentlest cousins. The others were ruffians, teasers, always angling to drink whatever was left in some grownup’s glass. When the party got too wild, Maribeth and I would drift away to read under a willow that’s still out there beyond the oval in the grass that marks where the pool used to be.
Sometimes we’d put down our books, discuss our Future Elephant Clinic. Where we’d care for sick elephants. Elephants too ill for their zoos of origin. Also, there’d be a dolphin pool. Our dolphins wouldn’t be sick, just super intelligent. Like Flipper. If either of us wanted to get married, the spouse-to-be would have to sign a form promising to (1) recite the Elephant Care Vow daily, and (2) live at the Clinic forever.
What I mean to say is we were strange kids together and I loved her.
Love her.
She’s changed, sure.
Never fully blossomed or whatnot.
But what am I? Some glorious flower of fulfilled potential? I left Toyota after a dustup with Ross, then left Subaru after Kent misunderstood me completely. Eugene took me on at Buick as a favor to his dad, who I knew from high school. My office, the smallest of all, looks out on the Shake Shack drive-through, staffed exclusively, far as I can tell, by three Christian siblings. All day long from over there it’s “Straw’s in the bag, Jesus is Lord.” The other day, the older sister caught me looking her way and did this magic-wand wave at me with a crucifix she apparently keeps handy, as in “Believe unto Him and even one as lowly as yourself may be lifted up.”
Also, haven’t sold a car in three months.
“I don’t even really mind that you were gone all that time,” Maribeth says. “I’m just glad you’re back.”
“Same,” I say.
“You and me against the fruitcakes,” she says.
Which is a thing we used to say.
Just then there’s a knock on the door.
Shave-and-a-haircut, side-fist.
She goes to the window, looks out.
“Cop,” she says. “I hate cops. Because of my past.”
This cop, tall and thin, is looking for Kip.
“We have a report that he may have been among those who pulled down the town’s Lincoln statue,” he says. “Using, allegedly, a rope.”
“When was this?” I say.
“Friday,” he says.
“He was with me literally all day Friday,” I say.
I get out the parking receipt from the clinic, hide the time stamp with my thumb, show the cop, on my phone, a picture of all of us at PigHip, Kip pointing at my eye patch, me pointing at his.
“Brave kid,” I say. “Imagine doing that for someone.”
“Yes, wow,” he says. “To have surgery on one’s eye, in order to help out someone having trouble with his or her own eye, is, in terms of bravery, something I would put right up there.”
“That’s him, that’s the kind of kid he is,” I say.
“And this was Friday,” he says.
“Friday,” I say.
Off he goes.
Maribeth steps out of the hall closet.
“That was just super cool of you,” she says.
Kip leans down from the landing.
“Badass!” he says. “You a sly one!”
Just flat-out lied to the police, I think. Haven’t done that in a bit.
“I’m going to step out,” I say.
The screen door does the same two-pitched squeal as always, which Grandpa used to say sounded like an elevator operator announcing, BACKyard!
Same old picnic table, newish recliner.
In a drawer in Wichita I’ve got a picture of the whole mob of us back here: Grandma and Grandpa, their three kids, all fourteen grandkids, and Floyd II, their dog, leaping out of the frame as if it’d just dawned on him that it might be wise to go in search of a different family. Even then things were sketchy. Uncle Gus was suing the railroad. Aunt Kay was dating two ex-cons at once. Sometimes Grandpa would have Old Sven from the fire department over, and Old Sven would make a big show of drinking a whole thing of cough syrup, then pass out on the couch, and, once, we kids put banana peels all over him and when he woke up he didn’t even notice.
I drop into the recliner and before I know it I’m asleep, dreaming of being a kid again, only I’m more sure of myself and always do everything right and everyone admires me.
I sleep most of the afternoon.
Then go in, sit at the kitchen table, remembering.
Where’ve I been all these years?
Kip and Mick seem to have cleared out.
“Morning, sunshine,” Maribeth says, coming out of what used to be Grandma’s bedroom, her eyes still sleep-squinty. “You being here must’ve wiped me out.”
Then she heats up coffee, and we sit there quietly a while.
Nice.
I find it amazing that in this day and age a man can arrive home from work with his face as gray and sooty with whatever is all over Carl’s face as Carl’s face is as he comes in from his half shift.
“How went the day?” he says.
“Cops came,” Maribeth says.
“For?” Carl says.
“Kip,” she says.
“About?” he says.
“Statue,” she says.
“They take him?” he says.
“Thanks to Leo, no,” she says.
Carl sidles over, gives my neck a grateful squeeze.
“Where’s the lad?” he says. “He remorseful?”
“At Frisbee,” she says.
“With the appendage?” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “Oh, Leo. You were parked behind me. So I let them take yours.”
“Ah,” I say.
“Your keys were on the pass-through,” she says. “Hope that’s O.K.”
Meaning: O.K. given that, earlier today, he let some of his dear young eye get scraped out for you.
“Sure,” I say. “All good.”
Carl takes off his shirt, gives it a snap. A handful of metal shards tick-tick to the floor.
“And another thing that chaps my ass,” he says.
“Ugh, here we go,” Maribeth says.
Per Carl, this Frisbee kick that Kip and Mick are on? Practice, go to South Bend for a tournament, buy a Corvette with the prize money? Is another example of a Big Crappo Plan (BCP). Per Carl, Kip and Mick are kings of the BCP. They had a BCP to open a car wash. A BCP to start a podcast about werewolves. A BCP to use Maribeth’s Discover to bring over Russian brides. A BCP to convert the basement into a home gym, which only got as far as them tearing up some perfectly nice carpeting and putting in a shower that’ll never work because it would cost thirty grand to even run a water pipe over to it.
“Well, at least he’s trying new stuff now,” Maribeth says. “Getting out of the house more.”
Carl drops onto the couch, pulls Maribeth down on top of him.
“Rapist,” she says.
“Leo, join us,” he says. “We’ll scooch.”
They scooch. I join them.
On TV’s a commercial for a pill that, put in one’s rear, helps one get off opioids. The pill’s large, a voice-over explains, but not that large: about the size of a grape. We see a couple boating, running across a field of daisies, operating a drone, coming out of a restaurant, being confronted by a seedy-looking guy who offers the husband some opioids, which the husband refuses, which seems to turn the wife on. As they walk away, the husband casually readjusts one of his butt cheeks, as if to say, “Thanks, large-but-not-that-large pill, for making this beautiful new addiction-free life of mine possible.”
“Although now he’s addicted to having that pill up his ass,” says Carl.
“At least that’s legal, though,” Maribeth says.
“Ah,” Carl says, deferring to her superior knowledge of the drug world.
A spider’s hot-stepping in one corner of the screen as if fired up about the prospect of getting on that anti-opioid pill the minute a spider-ass-size version becomes available.
Then it’s a NewsFlash NewsMoment.
“Oh, crap, boring,” Maribeth says.
“Food in the pipeline?” says Carl.
“Ton of PigHip in the fridge,” Maribeth says. “So.”
A reporter’s up on the steps of the Vestige Falls Battlefield Visitor Center. I used to take Kip out there whenever Maribeth was having one of what she called her Badger Mornings.
One day a duck zinged out of the river, nipped at his Mini-Whopper.
“Just a duck,” I said.
But after that he’d never go back.
“Tensions are rising,” the reporter says, “on this battlefield that, in its heyday, was no stranger itself to rising tensions, in those olden times.”
“Allegedly,” the anchor says.
“Allegedly, correct,” the reporter says. “Hence the raging debate playing out right now in this hallowed place that some claim is fake, Jerry. Did the Civil War actually happen? The jury, for many? Is still out.”
“Won’t the lads be mad they missed this shindig,” Carl says.
“Right up their alley,” says Maribeth.
The camerawork gets shaky. Somebody in the crowd shouts that it’s time to go in, clean out the propaganda, eliminate the Civil War agitprop, restore this place to a place of truth.
A docent steps out, little guy in red glasses and a tight cardigan.
“Look at that stiffie,” Maribeth says.
“Sorry, closed,” the docent says.
“It’s the middle of the day!” someone shouts.
“Just doing his job,” says Carl.
“What if I want a site map?” shouts someone else.
“Or souvenir?” shouts a third person.
“Snob!” shouts a fourth.
“Élitist!” shouts a fifth.
“Pretty dumb job,” says Maribeth.
Then a pole or stick or staff flies at the docent like a spear and bonks him square in the forehead so comically, with such a distinct little pop, and he sits down so promptly, so like an unstrung puppet, that a wave of laughter ripples through the crowd.
A big guy lunges forward, grabs the docent by the collar, hauls him to his feet.
“Is that Kip?” says Maribeth.
“Our Kip?” says Carl.
“What about their Frisbee whatever?” Maribeth says.
“Deceived again, Mother,” Carl says.
“It is, it is him,” Maribeth says.
The docent attempts a hand-rake across Kip’s face. Kip tosses him aside. A cheer goes up. The docent, red glasses in hand, slumps against the old-time cannon. Below the knee, his right leg seems to have acquired an extra joint. He makes a noise hard to describe, then passes out across a pile of cannonballs labelled “Actual Cannonballs.”
“Stay down!” someone shouts at him.
“This is not who we are!” shouts someone else.
Maribeth calls Kip.
“Not picking up,” she says.
“Probably busy,” Carl says.
“What do we do, what do we do?” she says. “Should we go out there?”
“We are not going out there,” Carl says.
Her phone rings.
She puts it on speaker.
“Ma,” Kip says. “I just now did something.”
“We saw,” she says.
“You saw?” he says.
“On TV,” she says.
“Actual TV?” Kip says.
“Where are you, kid?” she says. “We’ll come get you.”
“Did you tape it?” Kip says.
“Where’s Mick?” Carl says. “Is Mick with you?”
“Mick had to go,” Kip says. “To Cleveland. His grandma’s sick.”
“I thought his grandparents were dead,” Maribeth says.
“Oh, yeah, huh,” Kip says.
“Tell us where you are, Kippie,” Carl says.
“Don’t make it worse,” Maribeth says. “Don’t go after anybody else.”
“Don’t hang up,” Carl says.
Kip hangs up.
“Man the fort,” Maribeth says to me.
“If he comes back, don’t let him leave,” Carl says.
Off they go into the night, no coats, cross-talking like crazy.
On TV comes a variation of the commercial re: the guy with the anti-opioid pill up his ass, in which the couple is racing go-karts. The woman makes a gesture meaning, Comfortable enough on that little seat, with that pill up your ass, hon? The man gestures back: Never better!, then swerves into a cone.
Maribeth’s phone buzzes.
Text from Kip: “Ma, in my room,” he texts. “Under bed. Some shit there that CAN’T get found. Get rid of it. Will they put me in jail you think even though was total ACCIDENT?!?”
I go up.
Under his bed: an archery bow, a ton of lint, an old Monopoly game, a stocking cap, a portfolio covered with stickers. “I’ll Have the Freedom, Thanks,” says one. “Like Cathedrals? Thank a Caucasian,” says another.
Inside the portfolio: some typed-up notes on the main access/egress to the National Civil War Museum, in Harrisburg, an estimate of the amount of C-4 needed to demolish the Lincoln Memorial, a thick binder-clipped document titled “Prospectus for Bulldozing Entire of Antietam.”
Yikes.
In comes a cat. I didn’t even know they had a cat. This one has the coloration of a Holstein. It looks at the portfolio, gives me this placid eyeblink, like, Well, so now you know.
But what do I know, really? Seems like another Big Crappo Plan. That’ll come to nothing. Because Kip and Mick are both doofs.
At the PigHip, they had this big discussion about whether a person with no driver’s license could rent a car. Mick said yes, but first the guy would have to sign an affidavit that he wouldn’t wreck it. Kip said yes, as long as the guy was born in that exact same state. Then the check came and I paid it. Carl said thanks and Maribeth said thanks and Kip and Mick sat there discussing how places these days never give you enough sauce.
Then Kip caught himself and, by way of saying thanks, rubbed his belly, smiled big, gave me the finger.
Some kids come into this life and catch all the breaks and start making money and going places and radiating confidence and functionality and the world opens right up to them.
Not Kip.
Not poor Kip.
I really did use to love him.
As a kid, he was meek, chubby, bullied, helpful around the house, always apologizing for things he hadn’t done. Once, back then, he left me a note: “You do so much, Leo. I truly appreciate it!” He went through a penny-collecting phase, a phase of sending congratulatory letters to astronauts, a phase during which he was obsessed with measuring and remeasuring the porch with a yardstick. I remember him lying head down at the bottom of the swing-set slide, giving each leaf a different name as it fell. I thought, This kid, in school, must be doomed.
I take the portfolio out to the alley, toss it in the dumpster, drape over it a tattered raincoat with a salsa gob on it, put over that two flattened Amazon boxes and a big wad of three taped-together bubble-wrap strips.
Just saved you from possible domestic-terrorism charges, kid, I think. Still, you assaulted a guy, so.
I stand out there in the yard a bit.
Who thinks of Ohio skies as wide? But tonight, sheesh. Up there like the queen of it all is this big platelike moon with a sliver out of it at the three-o’clock position. A wash of stars across the blue-black up there looks like somebody did it with a quick flick of a giant paintbrush.
Text comes in. From Kip.
“Leo, brother,” it says. “Freaking out a little here. Can this be dream? Ma not answering. Am in Witness Park, by tennis court, holing up in tornado slide.”
I text back: “I just got rid of that thing. Under your bed.”
He texts: “Oh you read my text 2 ma.”
“Yes,” I text.
“Will never forget this,” he texts. “Promise you that. Someday world will know what you did here 2day.”
“That’s O.K.,” I text. “No need. Maybe keep that between us (?)”
“Yes,” he texts. “Like secret.”
“Don’t tell Mick,” I text. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Already did sry,” he texts. “Been texting w/him.”
“His grandma ok?” I text.
“I guess?” he texts.
Then I think, Wait a minute, hey.
“Where’s my car?” I text.
He sends a GIF of a stick-thin Appalachian woman with tears pouring down her face.
“Mick has?” I text.
“Sorry,” he texts. “Did not plan for it to go down like this.”
“Where?” I text.
“Unknown,” he texts.
“Cleveland?” I text.
“Not Cleveland,” he texts.
“Tell him bring back,” I text. “This not ok.”
“No worries, he is always man with plan,” he texts.
“Plan for my car?” I text. “No. No good. Send me his number.”
No answer.
“Send number,” I text. “Seriously. Now.”
Nothing.
I call, but he doesn’t pick up.
I leave a message, the gist of which is:
Enough’s enough. Time to grow up. Your future depends on what you do tonight, right now. You’re going to get arrested, for sure. They could shoot you, kill you. Or you could come home, we could help you turn yourself in. Easier that way, safer. Think about your mother, Kip. Time to leave behind this Mick idiot, who’s been filling your head with this stupid, indefensible shit. You’re better than that. In your heart of hearts, you know you’re on the wrong path. Look deep, kid. This is it. I know I bailed before. But I’m here now and I’m telling you something real.
In comes a text: “Roger that, brother.”
Good, there we go. That did the trick. Though harsh. Maybe because harsh.
Sometimes a person has to be bold and trust that the person he’s being bold to will rise to the occasion.
I know this. Or used to.
Finally, maybe, I’ve done the kid some good.
I’m about to start crying in the yard.
Text comes in: “Sorry couldn’t help you load,” it says. “Glad you got goods. See u soon. Am over by swings. Let’s rock.”
“Goods?” I text.
“Oops Leo that not for you,” he texts.
“What goods?” I text.
“N mind,” he texts.
Then: “Fuck just accidentally texted Leo about guns.”
“Still me,” I text.
“Leo please forget all texts,” he texts.
“Guns?” I text.
“Zero guns ha jst joking,” he texts.
Guns? In my car? Mick’s coming to get Kip? So they can “rock”?
Aren’t I now, as of right now, an accomplice?
Or accessory? Or whatever?
Shit.
I call 911.
“Guns, oof,” the operator says. “That’s bad. Also sounds like they’re more or less stealing your car.”
“Only the one guy,” I say. “Mick. The other guy, the one hiding out in the park? Good kid. Unarmed.”
“Unless the other guy already got to him with the guns,” she says.
“Maybe get over there quick,” I say.
“Good idea, sir,” she says. “Normally, in cases where we’ve been looking for a guy and someone tells us where he is, and that there might now be guns involved, what we like to do is wait, like, three hours.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“You’re good,” she says. “Just saying. Long shift.”
Is it right? That I’ve called it in? Ratted Kip out? Maybe. Maybe, in a few years, here’s Kip, out of jail, doing dishes. His kids are in the yard, his wife’s on the couch. He’s thinking, Wow, can’t believe I used to think the Civil War was fake. But now look at me: a husband, a father. How’d I get here? Who helped me? By calling the cops on me that time I was hiding out in Witness Park and sending me to jail, which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me?
Leo did. Leo saved me.
With his love, his tough love.
In April, I had my third Boxton Event (BE), my worst one yet: three pyramidal blobs came zinging at me as I sat in the showroom reading the Buick paint guide. Around that same time, near my house, this guy who’d had Boxton’s for two years BE-ed badly as he and his wife drove across the Elbow River Bridge. Into the Elbow they went. The guy went right to shore, the wife drowned while paddling around looking for him.
That’s where I’m headed.
I ask the operator: Once they get Kip, might I bail him out? Bailed out, might he be allowed to come down to the clinic? Just for, say, three afternoons, for the one remaining left-eye graft, then the two right-eye grafts?
The cow-cat, sitting in the window, gives me a look, like, Leo, really? Thinking about our eyes at a time like this?
The operator seems to feel the same way.
“Not following, sir,” she says. “That sounds like you stuff. This is law stuff. Let me get off, put this thing in motion.”
There are moments in life when suddenly there you are, the real you. Here I am. All those years, I had no use for these people. Then I did. Now I don’t. With Kip on his way to jail, I don’t.
I don’t actually, to tell the truth, think all that highly of them.
I love them but don’t think that highly of them.
This is going to be in the papers. And on the internet. And we get the paper at the dealership. And have the internet. Eugene reads the paper every morning. Sometimes while on the internet.
And I’ve just lost his loaner.
Time to clear out.
Maribeth’s got me in the downstairs bedroom that Grandma used to call Crap Central.
Grandma’s old sewing machine is in here, plus a treadmill, a wedding arch, years of tax returns in boxes, and, hanging down from the ceiling, a sheet of sheer red fabric from back when Maribeth ran her low-rent puppet theatre, Hands Within. On a shelf is a photo of Grandpa in his Army uniform, in Europe, just after he and his pals liberated some minor death camp he always claimed he couldn’t remember the name of.
I drag my duffel into the kitchen, take a last look around.
Goodbye, old house. Probably never see you again.
Maribeth and Carl burst in.
“He’s nowhere,” she says.
“Total madhouse at the battlefield,” Carl says. “Cops outnumbered by three to one. Then the mob went in and nabbed the books out of the gift shop. And knocked down the history plaques. After which three drunk gals loaded the old cannon up in their big-ass Silverado.”
“Oh, God, Carl, stop talking, make yourself useful,” she says. “Go take out the garbage or something. Jesus H. Christ. Let me think.”
“On it,” Carl says, and scoots off in search of some garbage.
I need to tell her.
That I just ratted out her kid.
Seeing her now, beside herself, cheeks hot, hair all over the place, I realize, not only do I love her, I do think highly of her.
I do.
Dear Maribeth.
So unlucky.
My phone rings.
“That him?” she says.
It’s Dr. Dalwani, from the clinic.
I step into Crap Central, take the call.
“So, your first set of slides are in,” Dalwani says. “Very happy results. Your left eye is now like the proverbial wise bridesmaid: attentive, amenable, ready to receive. Tomorrow we’ll grab the second left-eye graft from that enormous cousin of yours. Quite a character, that one. Did you know, he told me he thinks the Civil War wasn’t real? Crazy stuff.”
Then seems to catch herself, in case I’m also a nonbeliever.
“I hope I haven’t offended,” she says.
“Not at all,” I say. “I know the Civil War was real.”
“Well, I agree with you on that one,” she says.
Then a little silence, as in: Let’s reflect a bit on how interesting it is to have to even say that.
“See you tomorrow,” she says.
Don’t have the heart to say, “Actually, you won’t. My donor is, right this minute, being arrested.”
“Let’s do this! Let’s avert some blindness,” she says.
Kip knew, he knew how much I needed this. And still went out to that battlefield and did his silly shit.
Idiot.
Selfish idiot.
This is on him.
Carl leans in, a triangle of packing peanuts on his shirt, one arm behind his back.
“Dumpster was full,” he says. “To get our crap in, I had to move some junk around. And voilà.”
From out behind his back comes Kip’s portfolio.
I try to look like I haven’t seen it before.
“Especially please note this,” he says.
Tucked in a slit in the back cover is a Cabello’s receipt for six rifles, ten smoke grenades, two hunting knives, a hundred zip ties, three KitKats. Stapled to the receipt: a Polaroid of the rifles, grenades, knives, and zip ties piled up on a table in what looks like a storage unit. Kip’s leaning into the frame, giving a thumbs-up, one of the KitKats in his mouth like a cigarillo.
“Bad, yes?” Carl says.
I show him Kip’s texts.
“Lord God,” he says. “They’re on the move.”
“I called it in,” I say.
“Good to know I’m not the only non-nutjob in this household,” he says.
“You two get lost?” Maribeth yells.
“Right there,” Carl yells.
“Because look who the cat dragged in,” she says.
Which is funny, because the cat-cow’s here in Crap Central with us, licking something off Carl’s boot.
Mick and Kip are out there eating from the same huge bag of chips.
Carl doesn’t miss a beat, just charges right over.
“Guns, geniuses?” he says. “I don’t believe it.”
“False, defamatory,” says Mick.
“Guns?” Maribeth says. “We don’t do guns in this house.”
“Says the lady who once put drugs in my lunch,” Kip says.
“Hash is not guns,” she says.
“Well, obviously, but,” Kip says.
“Read it and weep,” Carl says, slapping the Polaroid down on the table.
“It’s six frigging guns, Ma,” Kip says. “We need to be able to defend ourselves. People are nuts, people hate what we stand for.”
“I get that,” Maribeth says. “But you could’ve asked me first. That would’ve been polite, that would’ve been good manners.”
“Time’s short,” Mick says. “Notebook.”
“Don’t boss her,” says Carl.
Maribeth gets a notebook out of the junk drawer.
“No, a real one,” Mick says. “With a lock on it.”
“Like a diary,” says Maribeth.
“Not like a diary,” Mick says. “The exact opposite of a diary.”
Then a little silence, as we try to figure out what the exact opposite of a diary is.
“Oh, never mind,” says Mick. “Your one’s fine.”
Mick sits, curls his arm around the notebook, scrawls something down.
“I, Leo,” he reads aloud, “hereby gift my car to Kip and Mick, attesting that they did not steal or take it without my consent written permission.”
“A document like that could have what possible earthly legal validity?” Carl says.
“Jesus, speak English, Carl,” says Kip.
“I’m not signing that,” I say.
“Add whatever your last name is,” Mick says.
“Not happening,” I say.
“Might be,” he says.
And pulls a gun out from his jacket.
Small gun. Like a derringer.
Still.
Puts it to my head.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Maribeth. “Absolutely not.”
“In the old days,” Mick says, “men were routinely executed for the crime of treasonous betrayal.”
“Had to be you, Leo,” Kip says. “Nobody else knew where I was. If Mick hadn’t come cruising into that playground, lights off? I’d be fried right now. Because of you.”
Tough love, I try to say.
But my mouth’s gone dry, very dry.
“That closeness?” Kip says. “Back in the day? Was real. But now? You don’t know me. Do you think you know me?”
“No,” I say.
Something in the way I squeak it out seems to get to him, and, for a second, there it is, flickering across his face, the old sweetness. He’s sad to see me like this, pressed against the fridge, gun to my head. He’d like to say something to stop Mick from killing me.
But for some reason can’t.
Or won’t.
Anyway, doesn’t.
Just gives me a wink.
He never could wink right. Only with both eyes at once.
“Leo, sign, I beg you,” Carl says. “It’s not worth it.”
He’s right. It’s stupid, means nothing.
And I want to live.
I sign.
“Pretty shaky hand there, hoss,” Mick says.
Then points the gun at the ceiling, pulls the trigger.
It just makes that click.
“We always both knew it wasn’t loaded,” Kip says. “That’s why I was winking!”
“And you find that funny?” Maribeth says.
“Behold the downfall of a childhood hero,” Mick says. “The revolution topples another false idol.”
Carl stumbles over, tries to pry the gun away from Mick. I have no idea why. We all know it’s not loaded. They wind up in this tepid wrestle-off which indicates that neither has ever come close to fighting anyone before.
“Carl, I love you, but stand the fuck down,” Kip says, and grabs Carl by the shirt collar. Carl slips, falls. His head hits the table, a pitcher drops to the floor and explodes.
“If this is love,” he mumbles.
He’s on the floor, head in his hands.
“Sorry, man, did not mean for that to occur,” Kip says.
Carl’s phone is on the pass-through. Maribeth’s is on Grandma’s old table, where the same three coffee rings from the sixties still make the same old accidental partial Olympic symbol.
Mick sweeps both phones up.
“Leo?” he says. “More heroics?”
I hand mine over.
“Now you’re getting it,” Mick says. “We’re going to be taken seriously around here. And everywhere.”
“That gal is so hot,” Kip says.
Up on the little kitchen TV is Eden Rodenhigh, of “Past/Not Past.”
Eugene sometimes puts her on in the showroom after we close, just to make fun of her.
“Looks like a vampire,” says Kip.
“In a porn,” says Mick.
“Exactly,” says Kip.
Breaking news tonight, Rodenhigh says: In a secret vault in Baltimore, a stash of notarized documents has been found, signed by Civil War veterans, who, at the end of their lives, fessed up to the big scam. Also a list of the true names and addresses of all former slaves, along with their actual occupations and 1858 yearly incomes, which, surprising no one, were right on par with the incomes of similar whites.
“That’s it, there it is,” Kip says. “She just up and says it. What everybody’s thinking.”
“See, Carl?” says Mick. “Interesting ideas. Reasonable lady. Not some stupid bigot.”
“Wait, that’s me,” Kip says.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Maribeth says.
Up on the TV, footage of Kip tossing the docent; a shirtless guy tearing off the cover of a book about Fort Sumter; three drunk ladies giving the finger to the historical cannon; Kip tossing the docent again, this time in slow motion.
“Tonight, in the heartland,” Rodenhigh’s saying, “homegrown patriots demonstrated a love for country seldom seen in parts of the nation dominated by the Brainwash Cohort.”
“Dude, you’re anointed,” says Mick.
“I cannot believe Eden frigging Rodenhigh knows who I am,” Kip says.
“And many more will soon know it,” Mick says.
“You have to admit,” Maribeth says, and trails off.
Kip goes over, takes her by the shoulders, and they do this weird, affectionate head bump that it seems they must do pretty often, given how naturally she lowers her head to receive it.
“Be proud, Ma,” he says. “Of me coming awake. And having a view not many can have.”
The drunkest of the three drunk ladies gives the historical cannon a kick, then does some comical hopping around, indicating, Ouch, my foot.
Then: an American flag in a wadded-up heap; the Visitor Center door lying splintered in the grass; a guy setting a pile of books aflame with a psychedelic-themed lighter.
“Ah, perfect, a book burning,” says Carl.
“Not a book burning, Carl,” says Mick.
“Fraudulent claim,” says Kip.
Mick goes over, raises his leg, drops his booted foot square on top of Carl’s head.
I can see from the look on Carl’s face that he’s thinking something like, If books are being burned, isn’t that, de facto, a book burning?
But he just closes his eyes, sits there quietly.
I close mine, too.
Dark, dark, dark. Good practice for what’s coming. At least nothing’s zinging suddenly out at me from various fields of utter darkness. Not yet.
“Let’s hit it,” Kip says.
The screen door cries BACKyard more peevishly than usual.
Maribeth drops into a chair, misses it, hits the floor.
“Oh, God, my baby,” she says.
Carl crawls to her, wraps his arms and legs around her.
“I’m here,” he says. “Right here with you, doll.”
“Air,” she says.
He unwraps his legs, leaves the arms. She squirms free. He drops a foot in her lap.
“Oh, Leo, your eyes,” she says. “I’m so sorry. If I could do it for you, I would. You know I would.”
And I do know it. If she could do it, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Because, once she decides she loves you, she never stops loving you, no matter what.
We need to call the cops now.
But don’t have a phone among us. ♦